Stories may contain text and visuals that work together to create meaning.
Comics and graphic novels entail juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.
Essential Questions:
What defines your identity? Is it defined by the objects in or around your home, your family, the way you speak, where you live, or other factors?
Can your identity change?
What symbols or images represent aspects of your identity?
Unit Objectives:
Students will write a poem based on lists of things they remember from their lives.
Students will create visual poems by combining abstract watercolors, collage and photographs with the text from their poems.
Lesson Instructions:
This is a fifth grade lesson.
Motivation: We will create books that are visual poems: combinations of storytelling about our lives and where we come from with collage self-portraits. We will look at some images by my favorite comic writer/artist as inspiration. The first step in this process is to listen to a poem written by author George Ella Lyon and then write a poem about where we come from. Listen for the kinds of things that Lyon lists in her poem.
Read following:
Poem by George Ella Lyon:
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox, and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush, the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I am from fudge and eyeglasses, from imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from perk up and pipe down.
I'm from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments --
snapped before I budded--
leaf-fall from the family tree.
Art SOLs
5.1 The student will synthesize information to perform works of art
5.2 The student will use the primary colors and black and white to mix a variety of hues, tints, and shades to create a work of art.
5.3 The student will use the elements of art—line, shape, form, color, value, texture, and space—to express ideas, images, and emotions.
5.6 The student will develop ideas for works of art by brainstorming, conducting research, and making preliminary sketches.
5.11 The student will emphasize spatial relationships in works of art.
5.12 The student will express ideas through artistic choices of media, techniques, and subject matter.
Core SOLs
LA 5.5 The student will read a variety of literary forms, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
LA 5.7 The student will write for a variety of purposes to describe, to inform, to entertain, and to explain.
Vocabulary:
Comics: words and images juxtaposed to communicate a story
Collage: mixed media to create an image
Metaphor: a word or phrase that directly compares seemingly unrelated items, for example, "all the world is a stage".
Simile: a figure of speech that makes a comparison with like or as, for example, "the toast was as hard as a rock".
Adjective: a word that describes a noun
Chop: signature stamp used by Chinese artists
Elements of art: color, texture, value, form, line, space, shape
Supplies:
Paper, pencils, watercolor, water cups, brushes, markers, scratch foam, painted papers, scissors, glue, mat board, transparencies with comics images, poem, erasers.
Studio:
Day 1: Engage in a group discussion: "What makes you think of home?". What smells, objects, foods, sayings, or people remind you of who you are and where you come from? Allows students time to share brief stories.
Make written lists to begin writing the poems:
items around our homes: bobby pins, stacks of newspapers, grandma's teeth, discount coupons for a brand new SUV. (they don't have to be the truth)
items found in our yards: broken rakes, dog toys, hoses coiled like snakes (metaphors help)
items found in our neighborhoods: corner store, park, swimming pool, Mr. Brown's three wheeled bicycle, stray cats
names of relatives, especially ones that link them to the past: Uncle Larry and Uncle George, Gramma Cady and the Websters.
sayings: "it's too far from your heart to kill you", "If I've told you once"
names of foods:foods and dises that recall family gatherings: tamales, black-eyed peas, plantains.
names of places we keep our childhood memories: diaries, shoe box in the closet, underwear drawer
Use descriptive language, adjectives, similes, and metaphors.
Write at least seven sentences that start with "I come from" or "I'm from" that use some of words from your lists.
Be creative.
Day 2:
Look at David Mack images. Look for red part and look at where the words are on the page (text placement).
Chops are signature stamps used by artists in China.
Using your intitials, design six possible chops on your handout (link to pdf of handout). Choose the best one to transfer onto the scratch foam. Following the instructions on your handout, trace the lines of your design with permanent marker. Flip your paper over. Place your foam underneath the square of your design and trace over the lines with a sharp pencil. It is okay if the paper tears. You want to make marks on the foam underneath your paper. If the lines on the foam are not deep into the foam, trace over the lines again with a pencil.
Make a handle: Fold your strip of paper in half three times. Hold so it looks like a v. fold the top of each v down to the bottom v so you are making a letter t. If the t is a tree, then tape around the truck of the t tree. One side of the t will be a folded edge, the other side will be floppy pages like a book. Tape this side together so you’re taping the book closed. Glue the flat side of your handle to the back of the foam. Mark the top with an arrow pointing up.
(The first time I taught this lesson we did the drawing first and the handles second. Not everyone finished the handles. A few did not finish either., The third time we made the handles first and then drew so everyone had a handle but many did not finish making the stamp.)
Day 3:
Look at David Mack transparencies of images linked above. Discuss planning and sketching as part of the process for comic making (show example?).
Finish writing. Choose seven sentences, one for each page. Start sketching ideas for text placement. Finish chops if necessary.
Day 4:
Look at David Mack images. Look carefully at the portraits. Discuss images in relation to meaning.
Sketch ideas for poses for b&w photos that communicate each part of the poem. Paint 7 pages, one for each sentence, use colors that work with the idea in each sentence.
Day 5:
Apply chops to each dry pages. Finish painting. Write text onto dry pages. (Bring hair dryer??) Attach self portraits. Embellish with markers, crayons, oil pastel, more watercolor?
Day 6:
Assemble books. Finish embellishment. Present to class.
David Mack Unit
Enduring Idea:
IdentityRationale:
We can communicate who we are and where we come from through writing and image making.Artist:
David MackDavid Mack comics
Specific works: vol7#1pg3, vol7#5pg1, vol3#1/5pg3
Key Concepts:
Stories may contain text and visuals that work together to create meaning.Comics and graphic novels entail juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.
Essential Questions:
What defines your identity? Is it defined by the objects in or around your home, your family, the way you speak, where you live, or other factors?Can your identity change?
What symbols or images represent aspects of your identity?
Unit Objectives:
Students will write a poem based on lists of things they remember from their lives.Students will create visual poems by combining abstract watercolors, collage and photographs with the text from their poems.
Lesson Instructions:
This is a fifth grade lesson.Motivation: We will create books that are visual poems: combinations of storytelling about our lives and where we come from with collage self-portraits. We will look at some images by my favorite comic writer/artist as inspiration. The first step in this process is to listen to a poem written by author George Ella Lyon and then write a poem about where we come from. Listen for the kinds of things that Lyon lists in her poem.
Read following:
Poem by George Ella Lyon:
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox, and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush, the Dutch elm
whose long gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I am from fudge and eyeglasses, from imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from perk up and pipe down.
I'm from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments --
snapped before I budded--
leaf-fall from the family tree.
Art SOLs
5.1 The student will synthesize information to perform works of art
5.2 The student will use the primary colors and black and white to mix a variety of hues, tints, and shades to create a work of art.
5.3 The student will use the elements of art—line, shape, form, color, value, texture, and space—to express ideas, images, and emotions.
5.6 The student will develop ideas for works of art by brainstorming, conducting research, and making preliminary sketches.
5.11 The student will emphasize spatial relationships in works of art.
5.12 The student will express ideas through artistic choices of media, techniques, and subject matter.
Core SOLs
LA 5.5 The student will read a variety of literary forms, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
LA 5.7 The student will write for a variety of purposes to describe, to inform, to entertain, and to explain.
Vocabulary:
Comics: words and images juxtaposed to communicate a story
Collage: mixed media to create an image
Metaphor: a word or phrase that directly compares seemingly unrelated items, for example, "all the world is a stage".
Simile: a figure of speech that makes a comparison with like or as, for example, "the toast was as hard as a rock".
Adjective: a word that describes a noun
Chop: signature stamp used by Chinese artists
Elements of art: color, texture, value, form, line, space, shape
Supplies:
Paper, pencils, watercolor, water cups, brushes, markers, scratch foam, painted papers, scissors, glue, mat board, transparencies with comics images, poem, erasers.
Studio:
Day 1: Engage in a group discussion: "What makes you think of home?". What smells, objects, foods, sayings, or people remind you of who you are and where you come from? Allows students time to share brief stories.
Make written lists to begin writing the poems:
items around our homes: bobby pins, stacks of newspapers, grandma's teeth, discount coupons for a brand new SUV. (they don't have to be the truth)
items found in our yards: broken rakes, dog toys, hoses coiled like snakes (metaphors help)
items found in our neighborhoods: corner store, park, swimming pool, Mr. Brown's three wheeled bicycle, stray cats
names of relatives, especially ones that link them to the past: Uncle Larry and Uncle George, Gramma Cady and the Websters.
sayings: "it's too far from your heart to kill you", "If I've told you once"
names of foods:foods and dises that recall family gatherings: tamales, black-eyed peas, plantains.
names of places we keep our childhood memories: diaries, shoe box in the closet, underwear drawer
Use descriptive language, adjectives, similes, and metaphors.
Write at least seven sentences that start with "I come from" or "I'm from" that use some of words from your lists.
Be creative.
Day 2:
Look at David Mack images. Look for red part and look at where the words are on the page (text placement).
Chops are signature stamps used by artists in China.
Using your intitials, design six possible chops on your handout (link to pdf of handout). Choose the best one to transfer onto the scratch foam. Following the instructions on your handout, trace the lines of your design with permanent marker. Flip your paper over. Place your foam underneath the square of your design and trace over the lines with a sharp pencil. It is okay if the paper tears. You want to make marks on the foam underneath your paper. If the lines on the foam are not deep into the foam, trace over the lines again with a pencil.
Make a handle: Fold your strip of paper in half three times. Hold so it looks like a v. fold the top of each v down to the bottom v so you are making a letter t. If the t is a tree, then tape around the truck of the t tree. One side of the t will be a folded edge, the other side will be floppy pages like a book. Tape this side together so you’re taping the book closed. Glue the flat side of your handle to the back of the foam. Mark the top with an arrow pointing up.
(The first time I taught this lesson we did the drawing first and the handles second. Not everyone finished the handles. A few did not finish either., The third time we made the handles first and then drew so everyone had a handle but many did not finish making the stamp.)
Day 3:
Look at David Mack transparencies of images linked above. Discuss planning and sketching as part of the process for comic making (show example?).
Finish writing. Choose seven sentences, one for each page. Start sketching ideas for text placement. Finish chops if necessary.
Day 4:
Look at David Mack images. Look carefully at the portraits. Discuss images in relation to meaning.
Sketch ideas for poses for b&w photos that communicate each part of the poem. Paint 7 pages, one for each sentence, use colors that work with the idea in each sentence.
Day 5:
Apply chops to each dry pages. Finish painting. Write text onto dry pages. (Bring hair dryer??) Attach self portraits. Embellish with markers, crayons, oil pastel, more watercolor?
Day 6:
Assemble books. Finish embellishment. Present to class.